The Twist of Cain

The Twist of Cain 
Witnessing Tools 
Monday, January 26, 2015 
Pete Garcia 



Fair to say, we live in dark days.  The world around us it would seem, has embraced the darkness and frolics flippantly in it, thinking not about what comes next.


I have spoken to people here and there, and while some express disbelief, others are distressed over their lives and where it may end up after they’ve breathed their last breath.  It would seem also, that as disconcerting as some view their impending deaths (it is impending for us all I might add), others are dismayed at the lives they have here and now.  Even believers struggle to understand why God sometimes allows terrible things to happen to them.  For us all, the future, is that long walk, down a dark path, into unknown territory.


As for the believer, our day to day life may remain unknown, but our next life is assured.  Maybe that is why so many of us long for that next one, over this one.


  For the unbeliever, this is as good as it will ever get.  For many, it is all they know, or all they care to know.  For the unbeliever, the flesh is all they’ve been born into.  And the flesh is ruled over by sin, as was present at their birth, an unwelcomed inheritance.  For the believer, we have been born anew, into a new spiritual man and given second life. 


Sin is a cruel and terrible master.  It enslaves one in a web of deceit, and no matter how far you fall down into the abyss, it then tells you soothingly, that you are ok just the way you are.  Sin at its root, tells you that you not only don’t need God, but that you can do for yourself, what God could not.  And so to understand the gravity of the magnitude of sin, we must go back to the beginning, and look at a young man, whose life is marred by the terrible consequence of his father, through whom we all share.


Adam, who sinned willingly (1 Tim. 2:14), partook of the tree he was forewarned not to do.  Upon this discovery, God says to Adam in Genesis 3:17-19

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…“Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’:

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“Cursed is the ground for your sake;
In toil you shall eat of it
All the days of your life.
Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,
And you shall eat the herb of the field.
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
Till you return to the ground,
For out of it you were taken;
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return.”

And so Adam and Eve were driven out from the garden in nakedness and shame. 


 God didn’t do this because of their deed, but because the Tree of Life was there, and should they partake of it in a state of sinfulness, they would forever be in a constant state of death, but never dying.  (Gen. 3:22-24)  But God, being merciful did not abandon them.  He did not destroy them and start over.  Instead, God provided for them…


Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. (vs. 21)


In order for skins to be made into tunics, something living has to be killed in order for them to be covered.  Thus, we have the institution of sacrifice initiated.  Blood has to be shed, in order for atonement (covering) to be made.  And so we fast forward to life beyond the Garden…

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Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the Lord.” Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.  So the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”  Genesis 4:1-7 NKJV

What is not known, is whether Adam and Eve had daughters before their first born son Cain.  Scriptures only speak to the first male child born.  And as would be the case, Cain, like his father, became a tiller of the ground. (Remember the curse)  He worked the ground, and brought forth the fruit of the ground as his sacrifice to God.  But his sacrifice was not acceptable.  (Remember the covering)  God reminds him that he (Cain) knows what is right, he only need do it or else, sin will rule over him.  And so it does.

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Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.  Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?”  He said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

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And He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground. So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on the earth.”

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And Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! Surely You have driven me out this day from the face of the ground; I shall be hidden from Your face; I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, and it will happenthat anyone who finds me will kill me.”

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And the Lord said to him, “Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the Lord set a mark on Cain, lest anyone finding him should kill him.

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Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden. (vs. 8-16)

From here we see, that Cain would have to wander the earth, seeking a place away from the presence of God, to find land suitable to support himself even just to eat.  Cain feared for his life, thinking (and rightfully so) that all this blame would come upon him, and that whoever came across him would take his life.  And in God’s enduring mercy, He set a mark upon him, so that anyone who met him, would know not to strike him down.


Assessment


What was the ‘mark on Cain’?  We don’t know.  And even though Cain erred, I wonder how a man who has physically walked and talked with God, could still end up in hell.  It would seem according to further scripture, that that is where he currently resides. (1 John 3:12; Jude 1:11)  It would also seem, that sin (first birthed from Lucifer himself), set his sights on Cain.  Remember that in the curse that God pronounced in the Garden, the Serpent (Lucifer) first receives the first and only prophecy ever directly pointed at him face to face.  It is here, that Lucifer is told that…

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And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.” (Gen. 3:15)

Lucifer then targets Eve’s first born son, Cain, and it is to this, we can only assume, that Lucifer begins to entice Cain to yield to the sin of pride.  His work and his own efforts of working the ground he thought, was sufficient enough sacrifice to come and bring before God.  When his sacrifice (his own efforts) were rejected, something changed inside Cain.  Some dark, terrible thought began to fester in Cain’s heart.  It was here…


And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell


That sin took root and Lucifer began to work a dark and terrible thought into Cain’s mind.  The pride of life, (1 John 2:16) began to shape Cain’s mind to believe that blood need not be shed for the remission of sins, but that by his own efforts, he should be acceptable to God.  Many years later, God finally had to set in stone, the rules that man would have to keep, in order to become acceptable to Him.  Of course, no one could keep them, so a sacrificial system was also emplaced to atone for man’s inadequacy of keeping God’s Law.  But even then, man found a way to pervert that as well.  Some 1,400 years after the Law was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, Christ addresses the so-called righteousness of the Pharisees, who upheld the letter of the Law, but not the intent of the Law.  Christ says to them,

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“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ But I say to you thatwhoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment…Matt. 5:21-22

I don’t pretend to know Christ’s thoughts on that particular day, but I wonder if He had Cain and Abel in mind, when He mentions this pointed truth, to those who purportedly personified the ability to keep said Law.  For believers, the penalty of the Law, is what Christ death on the Cross has saved us from.  We are no longer subject to its wrath, because He took that wrath on Himself on our behalf.  But the Law has no rule over the believer today.  We aren’t justified by it any more than the Pharisees were justified in their own day by keeping to the letter of it.  D.L. Moody puts it like this,
The Law can only chase a man to Calvary, and no further.


It was a schoolmaster meant to drive us to the Cross, not replace it by keeping it.  If we attempt to justify ourselves by it, we are no better than Cain in bringing the ‘fruits of our labor’ before God.  The Prophet Jeremiah says that the “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?”  (Jer. 17:9)  We cannot earn our own way to God.  Blood must be shed on our behalf, in order to wash away our inherited and earned sin we’ve accumulated over the course of our short existence on this planet.  The Good News is that penalty has already been paid.  That Blood has already been shed.  God sent His Son to earth to become a man, and to live out the Law perfectly, in perfect submission to the Father, and to endure the Joy set before Him, and was obedient unto death, to be that sacrifice for us.  He became in a sense, that tunic made of skin, to cover us in our own nakedness.  But for those who think they don’t need the Blood of Christ…

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There is a war between you and God’s Law.  The Ten Commandments are against you.  The First comes forward and says, “Let him be cursed, for he denies Me.  He has another god besides Me.  His god is his belly and he yields his homage to his lust.”  All the Ten Commandments, like ten great cannons, are pointed at you today.  For you have broken all of God’s statutes and lived in daily neglect of His Commandments.

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Soul, you will find it a hard thing to go at war with the Law.  When the Law came in peace, Sinai was altogether on a smoke and even Moses said, “I exceedingly fear and quake!”  What will you do when the Law of God comes in terror; when the trumpet of the archangel shall tear you from your grave; when the eyes of God shall burn their way into your guilty soul; when the great books shall be opened and all your shame and sin shall be published?  Can you stand against an angry Law in that day?  Charles Spurgeon

The Apostle Paul warns, ‘today is the day of salvation’, because we are not promised tomorrow.  Do not go after the ‘way of Cain’, because that path only leads to wandering as a vagabond, in a fallen world that will never satisfy you.


  You will wander in fear and trepidation, at what comes beyond the ends of this life.  This life, and your own works, offer no redemption, and in the end, you only stand to spend an eternity separated from your Creator, in a place designed for Lucifer and his fallen angels.  And if hell is powerful and desolate enough to entrap the most powerfully created being, you have no hope of escape.  You cannot earn your way to God on your own…you must go through the Cross.

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Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.  John 14:6

Very nice. Steven Collins has written an article that sheds new light on the 7 churches of Revelation. In it, he compares the Hebrew Roots/Messianic movement to the church at Ephesus which has left their first love and are in danger of having their candle removed.

He makes some other parallels too that i found quite surprising but sound. You can check it out here, if you're interested:
http://stevenmcollins.com/ANLATSCOR-norm.pdf